


An Epilogue.

by 264feet



Series: After the End [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Epilogue, F/F, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Moving On, Neighbor's Blessings, One Year Later, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Undertale Genocide Route, Spiders, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 05:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14325567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/264feet/pseuds/264feet
Summary: 1 year later, and life marches on.





	An Epilogue.

 

_(Ring, ring…)_

_“heya.”_

_“is anyone there…?”_

_“well, I’ll just leave a message...”_

\---

The rice-throwing planned for the wedding had to be cancelled because nobody knew when to actually throw it, and the Snowdin shopkeeper got some in her eye and went blind for 15 minutes, and Catty kept scooping it up out of the snow and trying to eat it, and Sans wouldn’t stop saying “a little ice n’ a little rice, ain’t that nice” and Flowey almost choked him.

Monster Kid, unperturbed, skipped up the aisle with their dress billowing around them in grace and guard helmet clanging on their head in chaos, dropping golden petals as they went. Asgore was sobbing and blowing his nose into a handkerchief the size of a towel, partially because it was all so beautiful and partially because Monster Kid didn’t ask before picking half of his flowers. Burgerpants was sobbing too, but probably because Bratty and Catty always referred to all their female friends as their ‘girlfriends’ and when Catty said she was engaged to her girlfriend it was the first time Burgerpants realized they had been dating the whole time he had known them.

_* “to nobody’s- well, almost nobody’s- surprise, Bratty and Catty got married. it was the first wedding in New Snowdin besides Mayor Bearington to the town itself, so it was kinda a big deal. it symbolized love. moving on.”_

_* “of course, i was there for all that noble stuff, and not just the buffet table.”_

“I now pronounce you…” Politics Bear- Mayor Bearington- squinted at the script that Bratty had written. “MTT Superfan #1 and MTT Supermegafan #1. You may now kiss.”

Applause rang out. Bratty swept Catty up in her arms, twirled her around, dipped her down low, and proceeded to kiss her/chomp on her entire face. Applause rang out again, but a little more tentatively.

“It’s so beautiful,” sniffled Guy, readying to cut the Nice Cream Cake. “I want our wedding to be like this, too.”

Burgerpants stared at him in absolute confusion.

“We’re _dating_?”

Guy winked at his flustered boyfriend. “Of course, silly! We have been for a year!”

Burgerpants held his head in his hands, his cheeks flushed. He was embarrassed, but not necessarily unhappy. “This whole time, I thought… we were just guys bein’ dudes…”

“He literally has you saved as ‘love of my life’ in his phone,” Flowey said, deadpan, as if surprised he knew more about love than them.

“He has EVERYONE saved as that in his phone!” Burgerpants cried out, exasperated.

“Well, sure! It makes phone calls such a fun surprise!” Guy said. “And it reminds me how much I love my customers!” He grabbed Burgerpants by the shoulders. “But, bro!”

“Bro?”

“You’re-- we’re different, bro. I wish you were my socks,” Guy said, “so you could be with me every step of the way!”

Burgerpants lowered his cap to cover his eyes, redder than the day his pants fell down to reveal those hidden Glamburgers. “Dude… bro…”

“FORE!”

A clang, the sound of romance, echoed throughout the Underground so much that the echo flowers in Waterfall would mock him. As he slipped in and out of consciousness, he caught snippets of conversation:

“.. supposed to throw a BOUQUET, not a BUCKET!”

“Oh my GOD, Bratty, it’s not my fault that the flower kid picked ALL the flowers!”

“Well it’s not MY fault you’re BEAUTIFUL!”

As far as he could tell facedown in the snow, the newlyweds were making out on top of his semi-comatose body and Sans had started serving up slices of cake after a generous taste test of his own. But a familiar hand covered his, thumb stroking his palm, and he realized things would be alright.

Or maybe he was just concussed. That was a possibility too.

\---

“Are you sure this is the one you want?” Asgore asked.

“Yes!” Flowey insisted.

“kinda an odd choice, mr. ‘i’ve read every book’,” Sans said.

“I read your quantum physics crap for curiosity’s sake, not because I enjoy it!” Flowey huffed. “This one’s special.”

“ok, you’ve got a point there.”

“And you’ve both brushed your teeth?” Asgore put a hand on one hip.

“Yes,” Sans and Flowey said in unison.

“So if I checked your toothbrushes, they would be wet from recent use?”

“hey, I said I’ve brushed ‘em,” Sans said. “i mean, at least sometime this year.”

Asgore chuckled. “Very well,” he said, sitting down in a well-worn chair. He opened the storybook and the words flowed naturally from him, as if this was what he was made for rather than kingly addresses and declarations of war. “This is ‘Fluffy Bunny.’ Once upon a time, there was a very fluffy bunny…”

_* “me, Flowey, and Asgore all became roomies. flowey doesn't track in mud anymore and asgore keeps everything tidy. they’re good roomies. although, uh... is it possible to feel like a third wheel in your own house?”_

_* “it’s fine, though. they’re happy this way. i think they both Know, but haven’t said it out loud. asgore can have another chance at being a father and flowey can have some kind of belonging without the pressure.”_

_* “what about me in this situation, you ask? i’ll tell you.”_ A deep breath, as if preparing for something meaningful. _“endless prank material. asgore falls for the same one every time.”_

* And then, a faintly deeper and more fatherly voice: _“Sans, the shopping list says we are out of something peculiar… what is ‘bofa’?”_

\---

Stage lights were blaring.

The lion stood frozen on the stage, their legs quivering under their overcoat. A sea of eyes and antennae and windshields stared at them in the audience.

They couldn’t do this. They couldn’t. They would never live up to _his_ legacy. Even now it felt sacreligious to stand up on a stage, hallowed ground to him, and act as if they could replace him.

Then: hands clapping together. The lion wiped sweat from their brow and squinted. There, in the middle rows: Bratty and Catty, clapping, standing from their seats. “Go on!” “You can do it!”

What would Mettaton say in a time like this? With expectations higher than ever, with a wannabe standing in a stage long left empty?

The words seemed to come to them from the ether: ‘ _Knock em dead, darling.’_

Right. This wasn’t about themself, their fears, their worries. This wasn’t about replacing Mettaton for their own sense of glamor. This was for the people who had lost their light. The people who lived and died by Mettaton. This was for the fans.

They snapped their fingers. The sound silenced all the hushed whispers instantly. Napstablook nodded, understanding the cue.

“New Snowdin!” the lion roared. “Let’s heat this place UP!”

On the last syllable, they ripped off their overcoat to reveal Mettaton’s sparkly blue dress. It caught the stage lights like a disco ball and left them radiant, ethereal, as if they had a metal casing of their own . The music crashed over them like a wave, marrying the past and present, enveloping everyone in the moment. It was a remix of one of Mettaton’s older, ghostwritten (no pun intended) songs. They called it ‘Rebirth by Glamour’.

Fresh flurries of snow caught the lights and fell in green and blue and red and every color imaginable. The lion struck poses once thought impossible by non-robotic beings. Napstablook even seemed to be cracking a slight smile, bobbing their head to the music so hard that the headphones almost slipped right off.

_* “someone new rose up and dazzled the hearts of the Underground. ever since people began to feel safe enough to spread out to different parts of the underground again, New Snowdin’s been feeling a little empty. but that day, absolutely everyone was there. yours truly included, of course.”_

Up on the highest tree, Sans ate a bite of detergent from the box labeled ‘snow’ he was dumping and dropped his popcorn on the audience below. “whoops,” he said to himself. “well, nobody will know the difference.”

\---

“PUSH!”

With a mighty groan that shook the Underground, the Ruins door opened a sliver. The monsters continued to push before falling back. “Stand back! Breathe!” Asgore commanded.

“Wa ha ha! C’mon, you spring chickens!” said Gerson. “Don’t forget what’s at stake here!”

The other monsters pushing- one with a head which appeared to be a giant hand (which was a big hand, so to speak, in pushing), Ice Wolf, and a very small but determined yellow bird- struggled to catch their breath. The Ruins door hadn’t been opened since it gave way to the monsters’ biggest nightmare. The monsters never thought they’d want to open it again.

“Attempt number two!” Gerson said, leaning comfortably on his cane. Asgore and the others steeled themselves. “PUSH!”

“Wait for me!” someone called out. Monster Kid sprinted as fast as their legs would carry them toward the Ruins door. “NGAAAAH!”

Their war cry echoed louder than the crack of Asgore’s back as they slammed into him. A moment of silence as Asgore processed the sudden agony he was in, and then a heaving sigh as the door opened the rest of the way.

_* “we finally got that door to the Ruins open. it helped that you loosened it, of course.”_

_* “why, you ask? welp, a spider messenger from the hotlands got a message to Bearington. the spider asked if the residents of New Snowdin would help their brethren escape from the ruins and cross the unforgiving cold. apparently, it was their queen’s last wish.”_

“Now! Go as fast as your legs will take you!” Gerson commanded.

At his word, a torrent of freed spiders began to scurry out of the Ruins only to be hit immediately by the cold. Snowflakes double their size threatened to bury them alive. Icicles formed off their fangs. But salvation found them in the form of warm hands and burning hearts-- those who remained of Hotland.

The town cheered as the last spider made it into a young fire elemental’s arms. The Hotland survivors began their march to somewhere warmer, somewhere the spiders could all meet and begin anew.

“Finally,” said the fire elemental. “I can play a part! History will definitely remember Heats Flamesman for this!”

“Thank you for your service,” spoke Asgore over them all, struggling to sound composed despite being doubled over. “Thank you, Fuku. Thank you, Oni. And thank you, Magma Hotboy!”

The elemental stopped in his tracks. His eyes shot open; his mouth hung agape.

“WHAT?”

_* “i saw the spiders seemed to be carrying an egg of some kind. who knows? maybe we’ll have a new spider queendom up and running soon. one thing’s for sure: hotland will know the skittering of life again.”_

As the Hotland survivors faded into the horizon, other monsters dispersing, Sans and Asgore remained near the open Ruins door-- Asgore catching his breath, and Sans catching his breath just from watching Asgore do such strenuous work. Even after they composed themselves, they lingered around the Ruins door. Snowflakes fluttered as if curious into the immaculate Ruins, flying beyond where a certain woman had sat telling jokes with Sans, beyond the last traces of her dust that the human had tracked on their way out.

“if you want to go in, i won’t judge,” Sans said.

Asgore seemed lost in thought. Finally, he shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “There may be things left behind that I would like to possess for myself, but it feels unfitting to disturb them. This is a resting place, beautiful in its untouched state.” He gave a soft chuckle. “I do not know if she would want me to trod all over it.”

“i get it,” Sans said. “we’ll always keep the memories alive, trinkets or not.”

_*”we considered sealing the door with magic, of course. that would keep us safe from humans for good. but it not only seemed disrespectful to her, but bad for all of us. what kind of sign of acceptance and moving on would it be if we locked the door on hope?”_

A serene silence fell over the two of them, at least until Sans knocked on the door. “Knock knock,” he said, shooting Asgore an expectant look.

“‘I am knocking’,” Asgore mimicked, with a sly grin.

Sans started as if about to continue his joke, then stopped, then started laughing harder than he would’ve had he told the joke at all.

\---

“Why did th’ snowman close their account at th’ snow bank?” asked Snappy, Snowdrake’s father. He had a sly grin. “... Their assets got frozen!”

He beamed as laughter filled the dining room. The only one laughing out of sync with the rest sat at the table closest to the stage, melting with adoration.

“H...a…. Ha….” chuckled Snowdrake’s mother. A tear came to one of her eyes as she saw the number of Gold displayed on the screen continue to increase exponentially. Originally it was one of the screens that would display Mettaton’s ratings, which was the only reason it could display such a large number.  

_*”as our numbers started to grow, we needed more places to live, and some people needed help more than ever. the drake family started a charity to convert MTT Resort into a permanent home for all the lost children in the Underground. in Snowdrake’s honor, his father was up there for hours rattling off one horrible ice pun after another to bring attention to the cause. i was honestly kinda jealous.”_

Endogeny fetched donations as they came in and dropped them off at the desk only slightly covered in some type of horrible slobber-goo. Meanwhile, in other parts of the resort, Reaper Bird commanded butterflies and some strange everyman to renovate at speeds that normal monsters could only dream of.

_*”the amalgamates have been doing great, too. they’re fully accepted by monsterkind, eccentricities and all. everyone’s a great big happy family… literally, in this case.”_

Just outside the resort, Monster Kid spoke with a woman whose head resembled a clam. “And you’re saying this ‘Suzy’ isn’t here, and has been missing for a while, but you want a room for her?”

“Yes!” said the clam girl. “She’ll need one. She’s out right now, but she’ll be back very soon. I feel it.”

“Out?”

“Out,” said the clam.

“Iiiiiffff you say so,” Monster Kid said, a little suspiciously. “How d’you know this ‘Suzy’?”

“She’s my neighbor’s daughter!” she said. “Well, with the recent… disturbance… I’m not sure if my neighbor is still around. But Suzy is. Her destiny was too great to be severed. Perhaps it was even because of she that they were--” she stopped herself. “Suzy will be back soon. It’s a neighbor’s intuition!”

Monster Kid wasn’t sure how, but they trusted her. Perhaps it was just a fun idea. “Well, I dunno where ‘out’ she could’ve gone, but I’ll mark her down for a room!” they said. They marked down things on a check-in sheet borrowed from the former resort’s front desk. “Say, what type of monster is Suzy, anyways?”

“Ah,” said the clam girl, with a knowing grin. She leaned down, closer to Monster Kid, and looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone. “You see, Suzy is--”

“... a nice space for all the CHILL-DREN!” boomed Snappy’s voice, along with the microphone’s shriek. A groan rang out in the audience from both the agony of the pun and the sound equipment’s error.

“s-sorry,” said Napstablook, turning away from the oft-replayed video of Dress Lion and fixing the equipment to its normal levels. “oh… congrats on hitting our next milestone of 15000G! lets, uh, keep it going! yeeeaaahhhh………..!.”

The clam girl took her seat in the audience after tossing a donation into Endogeny’s mouth-hole. Monster Kid stood unmoving from where they spoke, mouth agape, heart pounding.

\---

_”whoops, looks like this thing’s running low on battery…”_ The voice on the phone took on a twinge of suspicion. _“you know, i’m surprised yours still has any at all.”_

Then, a higher-pitched voice: _“If there’s almost nothing left, at least someone else talk before it dies!”_

_“sure. any ideas who?”_

_“Sans…”_ the higher-pitched voice warned.

_“whaddya mean, ‘sans’? i’m already talking!”_

_“Sans.”_

_“alright, alright, geez. knock yourself out.”_

There was the impression of the phone being tossed to someone. Then, the higher-pitched voice took over.

_“Hi, Chara.”_ A pause. _“No. Whatever your name was.”_

_“... It seems as if everyone’s perfectly happy. But it’s not like what you did never happened. We hurt a lot of people. But monsters are weird. Somehow, they’ve already moved on. It goes to show how quickly they forget and replace the dead.”_

There came another pause. A deep breath. The rattling of a locket’s chain.

_“Sometimes, I still hear you. Even now, a dumb part of me is wondering if you’re watching. Well, if you are… take a deep breath. You’ve lost, sure… but you’ve also won.”_

_“You killed me. Just like you wanted. When you looked at me and I saw my face reflected in your eyes, that’s when it happened. That’s when ‘Flowey’ died.”_

_“For the longest time, I couldn’t reset. It was as if the Determination had flowed right out my roots into the dirt! The only saving grace of this powerless, miserable form… gone, just like that. Leaving me alone, stranded, having lived and died twice for humans I barely knew.”_

_“I realized I was nothing. It’s like I said: a soul is the essence of your being. Without one, as much as I tried to spin it, I was nothing. I was as much a slave to saving and loading as the rest of them.”_

_“And then do you know what happened?”_

_“I was loved by people I no longer saw as people, even while searching after love from someone I overly idealized for a long time.”_

_“They had souls and I didn’t. By definition, that would make them more of beings than I was. But somewhere along the way… the world stopped being real. It became a ‘game’ to be ‘won’. Anything was worth it to figure out what would happen.”_

_“But… seeing some of them mourn… seeing them live in the past, pore over pictures of the ones you stole from them, cry on each others shoulders… well. It was like looking in a mirror. Until they found peace where I couldn’t.”_

A laugh. It was free of malice, contempt, schadenfreude-- it sounded childlike.

_“And as everyone forgot you, they ignored their true greatest enemy. That’s right. I mean someone who could eliminate them all with one strike. Someone who was growing more powerful with every second that passed beyond the vanishing of the anomaly. Me.”_

_“I can feel it, somewhere deep where my soul should be. The power to RESET. Isn’t it funny, Mx. Whatever-your-name-was? Through their love and forgiveness, I regained my Determination. My will to live, even in a world without love. A world without_ you _.”_

_“Hee hee.. They gave me the power to undo everything and relive their slaughter again. I could drag you back from the ether. I could get the answers I crave. We could finish the job and show them the true meaning of this world!”_

_“...”_

_“Just kidding! I bet you fell for that, you one-note chump. The truth is, I hate you.”_

_“Stupid, right? They’re out there loving and forgiving and still all I can do is hate. I hate you. I hate everything you did to these ‘toys’-- no, these people. I hate everything you made me go through. I hate you so much that I see red.”_

_“But I don’t hate you enough. Not enough to undo all this to get revenge on you, or get answers from you, or even to try and save more of them. Not when I finally feel more like something whose answers were coded long ago. I don’t hate you enough to live my life around you anymore.”_

_“So you did it, whatever you wanted to do. You lived ‘kill or be killed’. You turned almost all of them into dust at your fingertips. You crushed my spirit beneath your heel. But… they refused. We refused. And you’ve lost.”_

_“Monsters have survived genocide before and they’ve survived it again. Monsters can’t be broken-- not by a being of pure determination, not by a human with a knife in their hands, not by eons of life down here in their own mass grave.”_

_“The human souls are still gone, sure. But things are a lot more peaceful at the barrier. Where I used to hear screams in fear of the future, now I hear… whispers? Anticipation. Something is going to happen soon, and you’ll have no influence in the way this world will go.”_

It seemed as if they leaned in to whisper their next line: _“You. Lost.”_

_“Anyway! Golly, Sans sure wasn’t lying. This phone’s about to go! I guess I’ll wrap this up.”_

_“Goodbye, human. Wherever you went, don’t come back.”_ A moment’s pause. _“And… goodbye, Chara. After all this time thinking of you in that way… I hope the real you, out there somewhere, can finally rest easy. Your best friend will finish what we started, the right way. When monsters are ready, when the time has come, everyone will be set free. And then… I hope you can see those flowers on the surface again.”_

(Click)

\---

 

 

\---

Your nails dig deep into the fabric of the world. You lost your grip long ago, yet you can’t seem to separate, as if you don’t know where the game ends and you begin.

This space, this in-between, this was yours. It belongs to you, you and the red shards of your pretty soul and words of encouragement from a time long past. It would be said that it was all just a bad dream. And then you’d summon your Determination, and the world would be forced awake again.

Now, rather than removing this in-between like a blanket from over your head, one message burns before your eyes:

You’ve tried getting past it. You’ve tried interacting with it. Nothing. You can’t read it but you understand the sentiment: this world isn’t yours to play with anymore.

And you know you aren’t alone in the in-between anymore.

He- they- it? Whatever it is, you can never see it, but you can feel it. Watching. Smiling. The second that you hesitated against Sans, the second that your will clashed against the narrator in your head, this third being stepped in. A glitch. Something that should not be.

It must have been a one-in-a-million chance that it would happen. But you had fought Sans a million and one times.

You wait for a day. A month. A year. Your grip fades-- slowly at first, and then with a great yank. When your view into the game is but a sliver, when you have the strangest feeling that someone else completely has taken your place playing, the thing that should not be allows a message to come through.

_“Hi, Chara,”_ comes a familiar voice. _“No. Whatever your name was.”_

The message continues in its entirety, but you cannot respond. You sit awestruck, taking in every second of your only window into the game. How has it continued without you? How is that possible? It’s through you that these things are alive. It’s because of your presence that this world exists at all.

Isn’t it?

_“When monsters are ready, when the time has come, everyone will be set free. And then… I hope you can see those flowers on the surface again.”_

The click of the phone seems deafening compared to the silence of the void. A smile blossoms inside you, but not of your own will. You don’t know how you feel them move on, how that’s possible but they do, and then you are truly alone. Nothing remains to let you interact with this world. This world that has healed from your actions. This world that played on without a player to win. This world that has let you go.

And finally, after so much time, you let it go too.

**Author's Note:**

> AO3 didn't like the wingdings and kept deleting parts of the fic, so I made them an image. Since you can't copy and paste them into a wingdings translator anymore, this is what they say: "FILE CORRUPT."


End file.
